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Members of the media take position on the red carpet
ahead of the 86th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California March 2, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES TAGS: - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA)(OSCARS-ARRIVALS)

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As expected, Oscar finally got sombre and serious on Sunday night when Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave won the top award as best picture.

“Everyone deserves not just to survive but to live, this is the most important legacy of Solomon Northup,” said director Steve McQueen in his acceptance speech.

The triumph at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles makes Oscar history. It is the first film to win for a primarily black subject matter since Driving Miss Daisy did it 24 years ago, and this rights some wrongs from the past including the wipeout The Color Purple suffered.

But no film actually dominated. 12 Years a Slave took only three Oscars overall. Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity actually led with seven, but mostly in technical. Otherwise, the most prestigious awards were spread around. Dallas Buyers Club took both male acting awards, with the re-invented Matthew McConaughey as best actor and the resurrected Jared Leto as best supporting actor. McConaughey soured the audience with his thanks-to-God acceptance speech.

Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine generated the best actress Oscar for Cate Blanchett, while 12 Years a Slave did score with Lupita Nyong’o taking the best supporting actress category. Blanchett is the only repeat winner in an acting category. She dared to give a brief shout-out of thanks to Allen, whose name is controversial now because of a push-back from the Farrow family over alleged sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, Gravity felt weightless on the craft side. Mexican-born Cuaron himself won for best director, edging out British filmmaker McQueen for 12 Years. Cuaron is the first Mexican — the first Latino — to win as best director. He also shared the film editing Oscar. The screenplay awards broke down as predicted, with 12 Years a Slave taking best adapted and Her winning for Spike Jonze’s original. John Ridley thoughtfully paid tribute to the original man, Solomon Northup, whose 1853 autobiography was the inspiration for the film. “Those are his words, his life!”

Nyong’o became the eighth woman to win in the best supporting actress Oscar for her debut role, in her case playing an abused slave in 12 Years a Slave. Nyong’o stunned the Academy crowd with her extraordinary eloquence. Not only is she beautiful, she kept her cool even when excited. Nyong’o acknowledged that her joy at the Oscars results from “so much pain” suffered by her real-life character. Nyong’o also proved to be inspirational, saying, with tears in her eyes, “When I look down at this golden statue, may it remind me and every little child that no matter where you’re from your dreams are valid.”

The best supporting actor winner, Leto, also earned kudos and generated an emotional response with his acceptance speech after winning for Dallas Buyers Club. Leto told the audience that he was dedicating his Oscar “to the 36 million people who have lost the battle with AIDS.” Leto’s win is also unusual because he took nearly six years off from acting in films to pursue other artistic endeavors, including touring with his band 30 Seconds to Mars.

One of the night’s oddities was the quick low-high for John Lasseter and the Walt Disney Animation Studio. The Disney animated short Get a Horse! — a brilliant intersection of vintage B&W with modern 3D in a Mickey Mouse cartoon — shockingly lost to a European short, Mr. Hublot.

But Disney fortunes changed in the best animated feature category. Frozen thawed out and won, beating Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, the exquisite work of a Japanese master whom Lasseter admires.

In lesser categories, a wide variety of countries were given a shout-out, including Canada. The Oscar for best documentary short went to The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, a co-production of Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Sadly, the star of the doc, Alice Herz-Sommer, died just a week ago at the age of 110.